More people buying online, survey finds

"With the online shopping market growing so quickly and nearly reaching the Bt15-billion mark, Thai shoppers are finding great value in buying products and services via the Web as part of their daily lives," Elias Ghanem, managing director and general manager for Southeast Asia and India, said yesterday.

"Thai consumers like to shop on local websites as much as on overseas websites and are looking online for a greater variety of products, not just the lowest price. So domestic retailers have a chance to compete with overseas websites and should set up their online stores now to capture their share of the Bt14.7-billion online shopping market."

The first online and mobile shopping insights survey, conducted by Nielsen Co, showed that consumers spent almost an equal amount of their online retail purchases worth Bt6.1 billion on local websites at 41 per cent to Bt6.4 billion on overseas websites at 44 per cent. The remaining Bt2.2 billion, or 15 per cent, was on websites with unknown countries of origin.

Even when online shoppers buy from overseas websites, they cite "unavailable in my country" at 45 per cent as a more important reason than "products/services are less expensive" at 36 per cent or "is as easy as making a local online purchase" at 30 per cent.

Domestic merchants can be the biggest winners from the growth of the online shopping market by providing a wider choice of goods on their local online stores.

When they buy online and on mobile devices, the purchased items are more than just airline and hotel bookings. Of the total, 21 per cent are for fashion items such as clothing, shoes, accessories, health, beauty, jewellery and watches, which attracted transactions of Bt3.1 billion last year.

Another 21 per cent was spent on entertainment items such as books, movies, music, games and events. Online shoppers also spent Bt2.4 billion or 16 per cent on information-technology products including computer hardware/software, personal/home electronics and appliances; Bt1.8 billion or 13 per cent on travel, including airline, cruise and train tickets and travel packages; and Bt1.1 billion or 11 per cent on general insurance.

"The strong call-to-action for local merchants is quickly to adopt a multi-channel retail strategy to reach their customers in stores, online and via mobile devices, while providing greater product choice and more secure online payment options on their websites," Ghanem said.

"To sell to mobile shoppers, they should choose a safer mobile payment method that can be completed in as few clicks as possible."

The shoppers said online spending could increase with enhanced security. More than 4 out of 10 online shoppers said current credit/debit-card online security measures were inadequate.

More than 6 out of 10 online shoppers believe they are taking a risk every time they transact online with their credit/debit cards. However, increasing safety measures would convince more than half of online shoppers to spend more via the Internet.

In fact, the middle-income group, which accounts for the largest share of the online shopping market at 71 per cent, are the most willing to increase their online shopping if safety is improved, at 58 per cent.

More than 4 out of 10 online shoppers are willing to make a purchase on their mobile phones. The top three barriers to mobile shopping are slow mobile Internet connection at 54 per cent, small screen size at 44 per cent and security concerns at 29 per cent.

The study was conducted from January-February and polled more than 400 online shoppers aged 18 and above from Nielsen's panel for their online and mobile shopping transactions in the past 12 months.